The brief sleep had revived Andrew enough that he could now, with horrible clarity, consciously consider how much he’d ruined things. He was just deciding how to carefully broach the possibility that maybe he and Peggy could possibly have a little chat, about, you know, everything, when Peggy returned from the café with crisps and apples for the girls and coffees for her and Andrew and said, “Right, we need to have a word.”
She bent down and kissed the top of Suze’s head.
“Won’t be a minute, pet. We’re just going to stretch our legs, but we’ll not go far.”
She and Andrew walked a little way along the platform.
“So,” Peggy said.
“Look,” Andrew said quickly, cursing himself for butting in but desperate to get his apology in as soon as he could. “I’m so sorry for last night—like you said I’m clearly a lightweight. And I know, especially, that to do that when that’s what Steve’s been doing is so stupid of me, and I just promise to you now—on my life—that it won’t happen again.”
Peggy swapped her coffee from one hand to the other.
“Firstly,” she said, “getting tipsy on a few beers and being a bit of a tit doesn’t make you Steve. It makes you a bit of a tit. Steve’s got an actual problem.” She blew on her coffee. “I haven’t told you this, but it turns out he’s been sacked for drinking at work. He had a bottle of vodka in a drawer, the moron.”
“Jesus, that’s awful,” Andrew said.
“He’s getting help, so he claims.”
Andrew chewed his lip. “Do you believe him?”
“I don’t really know. In fact, to be truthful, the only thing I can be sure about, with all that’s happening at the moment, is that everything’s a huge mess and there’s no way someone’s not going to get hurt.” The jaunty musical jingle that precedes an announcement sounded and everyone on the platform pricked up their ears, but it was just warning them of a train that was not stopping there.
“I know that things are complicated,” Andrew said, because that seemed like something people said in these sorts of conversations.
“They are,” Peggy said. “And you can see that maybe my head’s been a bit all over the place recently. That maybe I haven’t been thinking straight, and that I’ve been a bit, well . . . reckless.”
Andrew swallowed, hard.
“You mean with you and me?”
Peggy scrunched her hair tight at the back of her head, then let it go.
“Listen, I’m not saying I regret what happened yesterday, not for one second, and I honestly mean that.”
There was a “but” coming. Andrew could sense it hurtling toward him quicker than the approaching train.
“But . . . the thing is . . .” As Peggy grasped for what to say next there came the familiar two-tone blast from the onrushing train, warning people to stand back. “I just think,” Peggy said, stepping closer to Andrew, her mouth close to his ear to make herself heard over the noise of the train that was now tearing toward them, “that I don’t want you to get carried away, and that this should just be something lovely that happened. A one-off. Because meeting you and becoming friends has been such a wonderful, unexpected thing . . . but friends is all we can be.”
The train thundered past and disappeared into the tunnel. Andrew wished, very much, that he were on it.
“Does that make sense?” Peggy said, taking a step back.
“Yeah, sure,” Andrew said, waving his hand in what he hoped was a casually dismissive way. Peggy took him by the hand.
“Andrew, please don’t be upset.”
“I’m not upset. Honestly. Not in the slightest.”
He could tell from the way Peggy was looking at him that this pretense was pointless. His shoulders slumped.
“It’s just . . . I really feel like we’ve got something, here. Can’t we at least give it a chance?”
“But it’s not as easy as that, is it?” Peggy said. Andrew had never felt so pathetically desperate. But he had to keep going, had to keep trying.
“No, you’re right. But it’s not impossible. We could get divorced, couldn’t we? That’s an option. It’ll be hard—obviously—with the kids and everything, but we would work it out. Find a way to be a family.”
Peggy put a hand up to her mouth, fingers splayed across her lips. “How can you be so naive?” she said. “In what universe does that happen so smoothly, so quickly, with all the logistics sorted and none of the fucking pain of it all? We’re not teenagers, Andrew. There are consequences.”
“I’m getting ahead of myself, I know. But yesterday has to count for something, right?”
“Of course it does, but . . .” Peggy bit her lip and took a moment to compose herself. “I have to think of the girls, and that means making sure I am in the best possible state of mind so that I’m there for them whatever.”
Andrew went to speak but Peggy cut across him.
“And, at the moment, given what I’ve been going through with Steve, what I really need—even if this is hard to hear—is an understanding friend with a good heart, who’s there to support me. Someone honest, that I can trust.”
—
They had been promised a replacement train, but in reality this just meant they were forced to cram onto the next service, which was already full. It was an every-man-for-himself affair, but Andrew managed to get into position by a door to let Peggy and the girls onto the train first, before some opportunists snuck on before he could. In the end, with no hope of reaching the others, he was forced to perch uncomfortably on his stupid purple rucksack in the vestibule. The toilet door opposite was malfunctioning, perpetually sliding open and shut and letting out a cocktail of piss and chemical smells. Next to him, two teenagers with an iPad were watching a film where old ladies played by grotesquely made-up men farted and fell into cakes, all of which the teenagers observed without a flicker of emotion.
When they finally reached King’s Cross and traipsed off the train, Andrew realized he’d lost his ticket. He didn’t even bother to fight his case, instead shelling out more money on the new fare so they’d let him through. At the other side of the barrier, Suze wore the telltale creased face of a grumpy child after a long journey, but to Andrew’s surprise, when she saw him she ran over and reached her arms up to hug him good-bye. Maisie opted for a formal but still affectionate handshake. As the girls bickered about who deserved the remaining strawberry bonbon, Peggy approached Andrew warily, as if he might try to carry on their earlier conversation. Sensing this, Andrew managed a reassuring smile and Peggy relaxed and leaned in to hug him. Andrew went to let go but Peggy took him by the hands. “We shouldn’t forget, in all of this, that we actually found Beryl!” she said. “That was the reason for the trip after all.”
“Absolutely,” Andrew said. It was too painful, this intimacy. He decided to pretend his phone was vibrating, apologizing and backing away with one finger pressed to his free ear as if to block out the noise of the station. He made for a pillar, still holding the phone up to his ear and mouthing silently to nobody, as he watched Peggy and the girls walk away until they were lost in the crowd.
—
Later, he stood outside his shabby building, which had seemingly aged ten years in the last week, and considered finding a pub or somewhere else where he could sit and pretend for another few hours at least that he wasn’t back home. He thought back to how uncharacteristically rushed he’d been when he’d left the house, feeling jarred by the change in routine but dizzy with excitement at spending so much time with Peggy. He’d barely had time to turn off his PC before—weighed down by his backpack—he’d hurled himself down the stairs and out of the building.
Eventually he resigned himself to going indoors, into the shared hallway with its familiar scent of his neighbor’s perfume, the scuff marks on the wall, and the flickering light.